My dear readers,

Proverbs 13:12: “Hope deferred maketh the heart sick: but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life.”

Hope is what every man needs. Hope is always future. A life without hope is devoid of purpose, joy and motivation. Many have done foolish things to themselves because they have lost hope. Hope is indispensable in every believer’s life, for the God of the Bible is the God of great hope. Didn’t God give Adam and Eve hope soon after sinning against Him in the Garden of Eden? He gave them the hope of salvation in Genesis 3:14-15 which says, “¹⁴And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life: ¹⁵And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.”

The serpent that deceived Eve, Adam’s wife, that led to the fall of Adam into sin and plunged humanity into sin, death and hell was punished by God. What the serpent did in condemning man to a life of sin from birth will be undone by the seed of the woman who will bruise the head of the serpent (i.e. save sinful man from his sin, death and hell), but in the process, the serpent will bruise his heel (i.e. Christ will die on the cross but will rise from the dead). The glorious hope of the coming seed of the woman materialised thousands of years later in the first coming of Jesus of Nazareth as the Christ via the virgin birth! This hope of salvation was carried through the Old Testament, and anyone then who believed in this future seed of the woman who would come from heaven to become the Son of Man to destroy the devil who has the power over death (cf. Heb 2:14-18) would be saved.

Heavenly hope has been the blessed heartbeat of every obedient believer who seeks to glorify God. Earthly hope is temporal. It only lasts within this earthly lifetime.

But a man’s earthly hope can be misplaced and not fulfilled. The result will be devastating to his soul and mind and sometimes beyond comprehension because he may feel like his whole world has disappeared before his eyes. He will realise he had spent all his strength and whole life pursuing vanity. He may feel like his heart has been ripped and shredded before him. To have hope and be deceived is a false hope. Some have lost their life savings because of false hope. Some have lost a limb or a loved one because of false hope. Those who give false hope have been innumerable in the last few years.

But the worst false hope is in the preaching and teaching by Christians and their ministers when they abuse or misinterpret God’s Holy Word. The false hope of the world costs their victims the loss of earthly goods. But the false hope from Christians, and especially ministers of the Gospel, robs the hearers of their eternity in heaven and condemns them to eternal damnation of gnashing of teeth where the fire does not die, i.e. hell. Sinners who sincerely believe and follow them will still find themselves cast into hell after they die without the hope of escape. These evil men are the worst because they deceive and give false hope in the holy Name of Christ, the only name under heaven that can save a sinner from hell. By their evil and wicked deception through false hope, they ruin the name of Christ and blind the sinner into thinking that he is already on his way to heaven; and thus he will not listen to the true Gospel according to the Holy Scriptures! What a tragic way to live and end before Jesus casts them into hell.

Our hope must be based on God’s promises or prophesies, not man’s word or worse still our delusions. There are many things people hope for, but they are follies and vanities if they are not from God, based on God’s holy Word. Every earthly hope will vanish with time, will be replaced by the next generation, or be destroyed when the world ends. But the hope from the LORD is eternal. Only God’s people have access to this hope that is revealed in the Holy Bible.

Therefore, when God’s people procrastinate and defer their God-revealed hope, they make their heart sick. The professing believer who refuses to have God’s hope in his life and replaces it with man’s hope will make the heart sick. He behaves like a Christian, but his heart clings to earthly hope that will soon pass away. He knows from God’s Word that God’s hope is in all things eternal because of Christ’s life, death and resurrection. What Christ did at Calvary will transform his life with hope if he genuinely believes Christ as Lord and Saviour. If not, his heart will remain sick with sin, death and hopelessness because of his hypocrisy. Outwardly, he smiles and looks as if all is well with his soul. But inwardly he cries, especially when he is alone. He feels like a dead man within. His outward laughter masks his inner turmoil. Nothing on earth can heal this sickness until he genuinely becomes a child of God.

Once he is born again in Christ and through the diligent study of God's holy Word, all the blessings rooted in God’s promises become his eternal hope. This desire within him for all the future promises of the LORD is like a tree of life that keeps blossoming and never dies. These future promises, i.e. his heavenly hope, include his eternal home in heaven, seeing the Saviour face to face, dwelling in the presence of God on His heavenly throne, the replacement of this earthly tabernacle with the building of God eternal in the heavens that is powerful, immortal, glorious and spiritual, and being with all of God's heavenly saints forever. Such heavenly hope helps the children of God to live in holiness and not be bound by earthly treasures because they see themselves as strangers and pilgrims on their way to heaven. The saints of old lived such a life and left behind a living testimony, helping others to follow in their footsteps. Isn’t that what a tree of life does? Hebrews 11:13-16: “¹³These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. ¹⁴For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country. ¹⁵And truly, if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned. ¹⁶But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city.”

All obedient and hopeful believers have an eternal longing that brings unspeakable peace and joy and brightens their minds, hearts and lives. They free themselves from the burdens and seductive powers of materialism and praises of man. The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life are subdued within them and kept under control. The attraction and pull of the world with all her philosophies and ideologies are chaff to them.

Their souls have tasted the living water, and they thirst no more for anything the world offers. They have eaten the living bread, and they no longer hunger for the crumbs that fall off the table of the god of this world. Their desire for eternal things grows with their study of God’s Word and their close walk with their heavenly Father in Christ Jesus their Lord. Christian fellowship is the sweetest of all earthly fellowships with fellow human beings. The tree of life continues to bear spiritual fruits within their hearts, and their good works will bring blessings to all and glory to God.

Is your hope a tree of life?